Term 2 – Week 4
Oracy Focus Week
This week we had a school wide focus on our oracy (spoken language) skills. On Wednesday, we marked this by holding ‘No Pens Wednesday’. This is an annual day of spoken language activities that takes place in schools, colleges and early years settings across the country. The idea is that spoken language skills are fundamental for learning to read and write, managing emotions, developing friendships and entering employment. In recognition of this at Uphill, we wanted to take part and try not to use our pens for the whole of the day.
This week in year 3/4 we practiced our oracy skills by putting actions to our English text ‘Little Vixen Street’. On Monday, we came up with and learned the actions to go with the words. We immersed ourselves in the story and started to think about learning it off by heart.
Science
In science we have been learning about sound this term. This week, we were investigating how sound travels through solids, liquids and gases. We used tuning forks and tapped them onto the surface of water – you could see the sound waves making the water splash then ripple. We also experimented by putting rice on the top of a drum and observing to see what happens when you tap it. The rice jumps up and down and you can see the vibrations of the sound waves rippling through the rice. So…sound waves need to travel through a medium such as solids, liquids and gases. The sound waves move through each of these by vibrating the molecules in them. Sounds travel much faster through a solid than a gas. Sound travels about four times faster and farther in water than it does in air.
No Pens Wednesday
In English, we were focusing on the character of the fox in our story. We put our fox in the ‘hot seat’ and came up with a list of questions to help us understand her character.
In French, we were playing the game ‘où est le…’ – where is the… – to learn the names of different animals in French. Mrs Maynes asked ‘où est le…’ and the children had to find the correct animal using their feet!
Work of the Week (Friday 20th Nov)
Last weeks, work of the week went to:
Chandra – Rozy, for taking a real interest on our project. She worked hard learning all about Elizabeth I and then went hime and did even more research!
Voyager – Josh, for an informative and well presented fact file on Elizabeth I. Superb effort, well done!
Sputnik – the whole class for producing an amazing ‘Scary Stories’ compilation. They all worked really hard to write and publish their fantastic stories.
Work of the Week (Friday 27th Nov)
This week, work of the week went to:
Chandra – Jude and Rocco for completing great reports on Queen Elizabeth I and then going home and carrying out more research!
Voyager – Austyn for some great work on his spellings. He has tried really hard to learn them and we’re impressed by his determination and focus on this.
Sputnik – Emilia for being a great fox and answering all of our questions. It made it much easier to understand the fox’s character on our story.
